13 Communists in the Hands of the Butcher Chiang Kai-Shek

(June 1931)

We have just received the following alarming news from one of the Shanghai comrades of the Chinese Bolshevik-Leninists, dated June 23, 1931:

After such a long silence. I am writing to you at the most difficult moment that the Chinese Opposition is experiencing. On May 21–22, thirteen comrades were arrested by the Chinese police in Shanghai. Six of the comrades are members of the Central Committee of the United Opposition (the national congress of the various Opposition groups was held on May 1–2). Four of the comrades are members of the standing committee, and there thus remains only one member of the committee (comrade C.). We were about to start work systematically after so long a split in our ranks. Our united organization was hardly in existence for a month when this severe blow was dealt us. We are compelled to restore our organization under the most difficult conditions of dark reaction. The event occurred because a traitor who was formerly a responsible comrade went to betray us to the police. We are sure to make up for the loss we have suffered this time. In answer to the blow of our enemies and the traitors, our comrades will double find treble their efforts to close our ranks and heal our sores …

N.S.

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The terrible information which our comrade communicates to us follows directly upon the news published by the Daily Worker of the martyrdom at the hands of the Chinese nationalist assassins of the secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, comrade Hsiang Chung Fei. The sanguinary terror which the counter-revolutionary Chinese bourgeoisie has conducted against the proletariat and peasantry, claiming its victims by the tens of thousands leaves little room for doubt that the arrested comrades, including the leaders of the Left Opposition, are in imminent danger of execution – providing that this punishment for their revolutionary devotion has not already been visited upon them by the butchers of Chiang Kai-Shek. The victims of the Chinese white terror, practised by a barbaric bourgeoisie which mounted to power four years ago on the stirrup held for it by Stalin, Bucharin, Martinov and other Mensbeviks, must be protected from the Chiangs and Wang Chin Weis by an iron ring of solidarity of all the workers in the world. The voice of protest must sound so loudly that it compels the executioners to release their prey.

Demand the release of the imprisoned Chinese revolutionists!

Demand an end to the horrible white terror of the Chinese bourgeoisie and their imperialist patrons of America, England, France, and Japan!